1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the configuration of a recording medium feeder for separating accumulated cut sheets (recording medium) one by one, thereby feeding the sheet to a recording section, or the like; and to the configuration of an image recording device of an inkjet type, or the like, including the recording medium feeder.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image recording device of related art, such as any of a variety of printers or facsimile machines, includes a paper feeder for feeding a plurality of sheets of paper (cut sheets, recording mediums) stacked (accumulated) on a hopper section by means of rotation of a paper feed roller (a rotary feeding member). As the paper feeder, that adopting a horizontal-stacking method in which a plurality of sheets are stacked horizontally, and that adopting an inclined-stacking method in which the same are stacked in a vertically inclined state, have been put into practice.
For instance, in a paper feeder of the inclined-stacking method disclosed in JP-A-2004-051302, a frictional pad made of cork, which is high in friction coefficient, or the like, is disposed in the vicinity of a lower end (at a position facing a paper feed roller) of an inclined wall. The inclined wall supports the back (the side opposite the paper feed roller) of paper stacked in an inclined manner. Since a lower face of a lowermost sheet of paper is brought into contact with the frictional pad, paper slides less easily. In addition, occurrence of multi-feed including the lowermost sheet at a time of paper feeding can be prevented even when the remaining number of accumulated sheets becomes small (See FIGS. 2, 5, and 11 of JP-A-2004-051302).
In addition, JP-A-2002-249248 discloses a paper feeder configured as follows. A paper feed roller is disposed on an upper face side of a paper feed cassette on which a plurality of sheets are stacked horizontally. The paper, which is fed by means of the paper feed roller, is transported to a lower face of a recording head by way of an upward, U-turn transport path including a reverse roller. After recording, the paper is discharged to a front face side of a housing of the image recording device (See FIG. 1 of JP-A-2002-249248).